Steve Walt has good faith about Obama’s foreign policy. (Having lately seen evidence of his clairvoyance,) I asked him where he thinks we're headed, and he offered these comments by email:
I mean pressure more emphatic and direct than even Bush and Baker
employed–and I don't see anyone on the horizon who will do that.
Perhaps
I'm wrong: maybe the Israelis are going to be receptive to change
provided we push a little and give them cover, and maybe Obama and Co. will provide enough pressure to get there. But Obama will be sufficiently focused on the economy and Iraq and Afghanistan so
as to not want to engage personally during the first year or two. That
means he'll have to delegate, and it will be to one of the usual
suspects, with perhaps a bit of diversity in the team (but nobody
outside the consensus). So the danger is that once again we'll get lots of energetic activity but not a new deal .
Or to put it differently: we'll maintain the special relationship–where
the US gives lots of aid more-or-less unconditionally and U.S.
officials never do anything tangible to end the occupation–instead of moving to the more normal relationship that would be better for us and better for Israel too.
[Weiss again. I said to Walt that he sounded optimistic.]
I am by nature something of an optimist, although I like to think it has been tempered by experience by now.
It
comes down to a simple question: do Obama, Emanuel, and whoever else
they appoint realize that being "pro-Israel" today means openly
opposing the occupation and using American influence (and
leverage) to reverse (not just halt) the settlement project and bring
about a viable Palestinian state? Until recently, being"pro-Israel" or
a "friend of Israel " was interpreted to mean
giving unconditional support and never voicing the slightest criticism.
Whatever the intention, however, this policy is in fact "anti-Israel";
it has enabled a set of policies that have done great harm to the
Jewish state. As a Jewish friend of mine puts it, our policy has
encouraged "reckless driving." One might call U.S. policy "anti-Israeli
in effect, if not in intention."
In the past
few years, however, the definition of "pro-Israel" has begun to
shift–think IPF, or J Street, or JVP, or Brit Tzedek v'Shalom–and in
ways that might make a two-state solution possible. But time is short. If Obama and Co. understand this, and have some real "baytzim," [Rahm Emanuel has given us this word: it’s cojones in Hebrew] then they can work with the Israelis and thoughtful supporters here in the US to bring it about before it is too late.
But
given everything else that is on Barack's plate, and the reluctance of
most people in the foreign policy mainstream to say what they really
think on this issue, it is hard to be optimistic. We shall see.
